On The Hunt: Gay M/M Mystery Romance

by Marina Lander

  On The Hunt

  Also by Marina Lander

  On The Hunt

  There are certain things Hunter still believes in: voting, opening one present on Christmas Eve, reading the last page of a novel first. The list is short, and tends to change the older Hunter gets.

  This list, however, has never included free Starbucks on a Monday morning.

  “Hey,” he yells to the squad room at large. “Who left a latte on my desk?”

  Alyssa looks up from her computer screen and frowns. “That was sitting there when I came in. I thought maybe you’d gotten here early.”

  “But it’s still warm.” He presses his hand over the lid.

  Alyssa shrugs. “Someone must like you.”

  He starts to roll his eyes, only he catches a glimpse of a piece of paper sticking out from under the bottom of the cup. Instinctively, he glances over his shoulder before sliding the paper free.

  The handwriting is small, neat, crammed into one corner of the paper, which appears to be stationery from the Hilton by Bryant Park.

  It reads: You should start studying again.

  All the breath rushes out of Hunter’s lungs.

  “Who else was in here in the last hour?” he demands as his stomach grows cold. He refuses to panic—it could be nothing, nothing at all. Just a practical joke.

  “No one, just the captain and maybe Mohammed—Hunter, what’s wrong?”

  He slams the note down on the desk in front her. Very slowly, Alyssa’s eyes widen.

  “Oh, shit,” she breathes.

  Hunter swallows hard, hands balled into fists at his hips. “Looks like the Scholar’s back after all.”

  ~

  He hates being right when it comes to these things, and he tells his captain as much.

  Frederic rolls his eyes. “What, you want to say ‘I told you so’ to my face?”

  “I don’t need to say it, you know it’s true. The Jameson murder wasn’t random, he left me a goddamn clue and I didn’t even realize—”

  “Hunter.” Frederic puts a hand on Hunter’s shoulder, his expression serious. “There was no reason for you to think the Scholar was behind it, we haven’t heard from him in years.”

  “Three years,” Hunter corrects as he shrugs off Frederic’s hand. “And that’s kind of the whole point. He’s been waiting for the perfect moment to have a reunion tour.”

  Alyssa still stands at her desk, staring down at the note with confused fascination. “I don’t understand. I was sitting right here the whole time, how the hell did he—”

  “It didn’t have to be him. He could’ve given it to a janitor, a delivery boy, anyone. You couldn’t have known.” Hunter takes the slip of paper from her and hunts around for an evidence bag, shoving the thing inside even though he knows it’s useless to try to get prints off it. He can feel irrational anger churning in his gut, anger he wants to take out on his partner, but he keeps himself in check; even after two years, Alyssa’s still green, still learning the ropes. He can’t blame her for a ruthlessly intelligent serial killer trying to bait him.

  He can feel Frederic watching him like a hawk. “I’m not going to let you abandon your other cases for this, Hunter. You don’t have any proof that the Scholar’s behind the Jameson murder—hell, you don’t even know the Scholar left you that note—”

  “It’s him, Cap.” Hunter yanks open the side drawer of his desk and grabs a manila folder he hasn’t touched in ages. He dumps the contents out on his keyboard.

  Alyssa lets out a quiet breath. He’s never shown her the collection of notes; three years’ worth of riddles, clues, taunts, most of which Hunter could never make heads or tails.

  He waves his hand at the pile. “Look at the handwriting, the hotel stationery. It’s all the same. It’s him, and he’s telling me he’s about to get really busy.”

  Frederic shakes his head. “Until he does something, it’s business as usual.”

  Hunter grits his teeth. “Captain—”

  “No, Detective, we’re done discussing this. You keep investigating your current caseload, understand?”

  He’s dangerously close to telling Frederic to take his orders and go to hell, only Alyssa’s phone rings in the nick of time. She answers, nods once, then goes very pale, looking straight at Hunter.

  “They—they found a body on the Chicago College campus,” she says. “A political science professor, strangled to death.”

  Hunter’s stomach turns to ice, but he still smirks ruefully at Frederic. “Guess that’s my invitation to reopen my old case, huh?”

  Frederics sighs and scrubs a hand over his cheek. “Looks like it.”

  ~

  Four and a half years ago, a series of murders occurred on college campuses in the Chicago area. Every one of them involved a person of high academic study; a master’s student, a PhD candidate, a tenured professor. And every one of the victims studied the criminal justice system in some form or another.

  The media nicknamed the killer The Scholar within a few weeks of the murders going public, and Hunter hated it. It was exactly what the son of a bitch wanted: notoriety. The profilers said the killer was most likely a male in his late thirties and highly educated, and in Hunter’s mind, he was desperate for the spotlight, to be acknowledged.

  Not only did the Scholar manage to kill seven members of the academic community, he’d gotten away with it. And not before he strung Hunter and his partner along with cryptic clues consisting of random facts about procedural law.

  Hunter’s partner at the time was convinced the killer wasn’t an academic, but a former lawyer. Hunter never believed him.

  Now, though, Hunter’s willing to believe anything, as long as it helps him finally catch the bastard and stop mentally berating himself for not being smart enough to play the Scholar’s games.

  ~

  The victim is Jonathan Gellens, a fairly new addition to the faculty at Chicago College.

  “Security found him in the stairwell of the humanities department early this morning,” Alyssa says, reading off her little black notebook. “Apparently it wasn’t unusual for him to keep odd hours. No one saw him leave the building, but security let him in at two a.m.”

  Hunter frowns as he kneels down beside the body crumpled on the stairs. “He didn’t have a key?”

  “The guard on duty says Gellens lost his key a few days ago and was waiting on a replacement.”

  The guy looks young for a professor, late twenties at most. The skin around his neck is darkly bruised.

  “Tell me it was rope strangulation,” Hunter says to Mohammed, who is making notations on his clipboard.

  “I can’t say for certain until I get him back to the lab, but yes, it looks to be that way,” the medical examiner replies grimly. “You’re thinking it’s the Scholar, aren’t you?”

  “Frederic would want me to say no.”

  “Which is an obvious yes.” Mohammed clears his throat, pointedly looking back down at his notes as he adds, “You know, they could bring the FBI in on this.”

  Hunter’s heart immediately flies into his throat. “It’s my case, the feds don’t have anything to do with this.”

  “Well, not all of them. Just one.”

  Alyssa gives them both an odd look. “Are you two talking in code again?”

  “No, Mohammed just likes to be paranoid.” Hunter shoots him a deadly glare, to which Mohammed simply raises an eyebrow.

  “I’m not the one being paranoid here,” he replies smoothly. “Just pointing out a possibility, that’s all. In case you didn’t know, Ari, Hunter here despises all feds and everything they stand for.”

  “We’ve never even worked with the Bur
eau before, though.”

  “You haven’t, no. Hunter has other experiences.”

  It’s true Hunter has made it a point to keep his past career highlights to himself when it comes to his working relationship with Alyssa. His history is his business and none of her concern. Partners only need to know so much personal information—anything more and you risk compromising all professionalism.

  But Alyssa’s young and inquisitive. It’s part of what makes her a good detective. It also makes her far too curious.

  “Did you have a falling out with them or something?” she asks.

  Hunter huffs out a breath. “No, it’s nothing like that.”

  “Did they steal one of your cases?”

  “No, can we go back to solving this murder, please?”

  Alyssa sighs, a pinch between her eyes. “I wish you trusted me more sometimes,” she says quietly.

  “It’s not about trust,” Hunter says. “It’s just—not something you need to worry about.” He goes back to the Jameson case in his head, cataloging the bruise patterns of the strangling—the victim wasn’t an academic—however, the murderer had used rope. It was a long shot with no other evidence to link it to the Scholar, but what if—

  “Detective Morris?” An officer holds out an envelope to Hunter, breaking into his thoughts. “This was found in the victim’s office, on his desk.”

  He almost doesn’t want to look, because he already knows what’s inside. And really, Hunter hates being right sometimes.

  But he still pulls on a pair of latex gloves and tentatively takes the letter from the officer.

  “You know what it is, don’t you?” Alyssa asks quietly.

  “I haven’t seen one of these in years.” The note is written on hotel stationery, only this one is a more obscure downtown location. It’s not handwritten, but typed in neat twelve-point Times New Roman.

  State of Illinois vs. Haskley, August, 1979, it reads.

  Hunter sighs, resisting the urge to wad the damn thing up and set it on fire, even though he knows he’ll go straight back to the station and look up the case. He always does.

  Alyssa frowns over his shoulder. “So you’re supposed to take that as a clue?”

  “I can if I want. They never tell us much, except who the next victim might be. My old partner, he—” Hunter winces. “He liked the research of it, said it made him feel like he was getting in the bastard’s head.”

  “But you didn’t?”

  “No. I don’t need research to tell me the guy’s a fucking psycho.” Hunter shoves the letter into an evidence bag, knowing damn well the envelope and stationery will be free of prints.

  Trust a serial killer to make him start talking about his bastard ex-partner.

  ~

  Hunter doesn’t go home for the next twenty-four hours. He lives at his desk, pouring over old evidence and witness testimonies, looking for the missing pieces. He has the Haskley case pulled up on his screen: a man confessed to a murder only to be shot in the head two days later by the victim’s husband, who was later acquitted. There’s no direct relation of the case to any of the Scholar’s past murders, and soon Hunter feels a migraine pressing in between his eyes.

  “You haven’t slept in two days,” Alyssa says, sounding more exasperated than worried. “You do realize you’re wearing the same shirt you wore on Monday, right?”

  Hunter gives her a tired smile. “Yeah, I know. But I’d just be doing this shit at home, anyway.”

  She sighs, dropping into her desk chair. “Sadly, I know this to be true. But you’re no good to me as a zombie, Hunter. Go home, get some sleep. I’ll let you know if something comes up.”

  “There’s no way I’m sleeping now, not when—”

  “Morris!” Frederic calls from his office. “Get in here, please. Now. You too, Harrington.”

  Alyssa’s eyes widen. “What did you do?”

  “Nothing,” Hunter hisses, though a part of him frantically thinks back over the last several hours trying to remember if did he did something outside of protocol in some kind of sleep-deprived delirium.

  When they walk into the captain’s office, Frederic’s popping three Excedrin and chasing them with day-old coffee.

  It’s not a good sign.

  “Hunter, I want you to sit down,” he says evenly.

  Hunter crosses his arms over his chest. “I’d prefer to stand, thanks.”

  Frederic narrows his eyes at him, mouth in a tight line. “The FBI just called. They’re sending agents in to take over the Scholar case starting tomorrow. You and Detective Harrington will be the liaisons to the Bureau, but you’re no longer calling the shots on this one. I expect full cooperation from you both on this. And by ‘you both,’ I mean you, Hunter.”

  His palms immediately start to sweat. “Sir, if I may ask—who’s going to be the agent in charge?”

  Frederic clears his throat. “Full cooperation, Detective.”

  “Who’s the agent?”

  He sighs. “Special Agent Stephen.”

  Hunter goes completely still for a moment, holding Frederic’s stern gaze. He can feel Alyssa’s eyes on him as well.

  “Fine,” he finally replies in a deceptively calm, collected voice. Hunter is rather proud of himself, given the sudden racing of his heart.

  Frederic looks unconvinced. “Fine? That’s it?”

  “Yeah, that’s it. Now, if you’ll excuse me, I’ve only got another twenty-four hours before I lose control of my case—a case I took responsibility for and have the most first-hand knowledge on, mind you.”

  “No one’s questioning your expertise on the Scholar, Hunter—”

  “No, but he will. That’s the only reason he’s leading this thing, the only reason—” Hunter cuts himself off, angry heat crawl up the back of his neck. He takes a few deep breaths, swallowing the resentment bubbling up inside him.

  Of course they’d send in Stephen. Of course.

  “I don’t want you to take this personally,” Frederic says. “Stephen has experience with the Scholar, too, and it makes sense to have the two of you on this together, regardless of your history.”

  Hunter grits his teeth. “You damn well know our history.”

  “I also know you’re a damn good detective who can put all that aside to find a killer.” But there’s a flash of sympathy in Frederic’s eyes.

  Alyssa slowly raises her hand. “Um, may I ask why Agent Stephen is a big deal?”

  “He’s not a big deal,” Hunter says, “just another FBI drone.” He turns on his heel and leaves Frederic’s office without another word, grabbing his keys and his files off his desk on his way out of the station.

  He’s nearly home when Frederic calls.

  “Off the record, you don’t have to like this, you know,” Frederic says.

  “Off the record, I said I was fine,” Hunter replies. “Alyssa told me to go get some sleep, so that’s what I’m doing.”

  “Maybe you should start pretending she’s your captain instead of me. It’d be easier to get you to follow orders.”

  “She’s yet to become a self-centered ass.”

  Frederic laughs. “Touche’. But speaking of Harrington, don’t make me be the one to explain Stephen to her. It’s just awkward. She deserves to know at least some background on you two, and you’re her partner.”

  Hunter stops at a red light and closes his eyes for a moment. “I’ll think about it.”

  “Please do. Now go sleep, you’ve got some feds to deal with tomorrow.”

  ~

  It’s been almost three years since Hunter’s really talked about Daniel Stephen. But the truth is, Hunter thinks about him every goddamn day.

  And because of that—or maybe in spite of it, Hunter can’t ever decide—he hates Daniel Stephen more than anyone else in the world.

  It’s what happens when you fall in love with someone and they break your heart.

  ~

  Hunter sleeps for ten hours straight. He has every intention of stayi
ng up with a Quantum Leap marathon and his case files, but his body totally betrays him, and the next thing he knows he’s waking up on top of his comforter with his face buried in a stack of crime scene photos.

  His dog Sonny sits patiently beside the bed, watching Hunter with wide brown eyes. His tail thumps against the carpet as Hunter groans and sits up.

  “You fail as an alarm clock,” Hunter mumbles affectionately, scratching Sonny’s muzzle.

  Sonny wuffles in reply.

  “I know. Can’t deal with the FBI on no sleep.”

  His phone suddenly buzzes with Alyssa’s number, interrupting Hunter’s trip to the kitchen for much-needed caffeine.

  “Are you awake yet?” she asks.

  “‘Course I am,” Hunter says around a yawn. “Any new developments while I was unconscious?”

  “The FBI’s here.”

  Hunter comes to an abrupt halt, suddenly wide awake. “But Frederic said—”

  “Yeah, they showed up early. And, uh, Agent Stephen is asking for you.”

  He thumps his head against the hallway wall twice. “All right, I’m on my way. Tell him—tell him he can damn well wait.”

  “In those exact words?” He can hear the smirk in her voice.

  “More or less.”

  Hunter hangs up. Sonny is at his feet, and he tilts his head at Hunter inquisitively.

  “What I wouldn’t give to switch places with you right now,” Hunter sighs, dropping a kiss between Sonny’s ears.

  ~

  Hunter can hear the dull roar of chaos from the lobby of the station. He takes a moment to steel himself, squaring his shoulders as he pushes through the doors of the squad room.

  He gets two steps inside before Detective Furla grabs his arm.

  “Man, is this about the Scholar?” he asks, jerking his head toward the small band of feds gathered around a large computer screen that wasn’t there yesterday. “They descended on the place like locusts about an hour ago, but won’t talk to anyone but the Captain. We all figured this had to be about your case.”